Rock Chalk

I've never been a big sports fan.  I liked playing sports, I loved softball when I played - 10 years - I liked tennis a little, I hated soccer and I'm way to short to have ever dribbled a basketball.  Watching them was a different story.  I felt pride when the Diamondbacks won the the World Series back in 2001.  I was sitting in my mom's big California king bed with a four-year-old brother bouncing beside me in a little purple and silver shirt and hat.  He didn't really fully understand the magnitude of such a young team winning, but he knew we were cheering for the boys in purple and that everyone was excited when Louis Gonzalez made that homerun - so he cheered.  I was about 12 and was excited about sports for the first and only time until I came to KU.

Sports fandom wasn't big in my family.  My dad never pronounced "The Celtics" right, always using the Irish iron-age pronunciation and making it very clear to anyone he spoke to that he didn't follow basketball.  I went to maybe two games at Bank One Ballpark (BOB as we called it).  I never went to a Suns game...and remember, they were an incredible team.  I watched Garrison play T-ball.  That was my introduction to sports. Then I met my stepdad, who, among so many other things he's taught me, brought me into the world of sports...to a degree.  My stepdad is no sports junkie, he hates professional basketball, will MAYBE go to a Royals game...but unless he's in a luxury box with air conditioning and Fat Tire...probably not.  We do watch Chiefs games sometimes and the Superbowl.  But what he introduced me to most - was the Jayhawk Nation. He was one of the first people in my immediate family to wear collegiate attire a lot.  He sports his fandom all the time on the weekends - and now on casual fridays, despite being the head of the legal department....he rolls in wearing a KU shirt on fridays.


As a freshman and sophomore at KU, I still didn't get "Jayhawk Fever."  I was commuting, which I think was a major problem.  But then...2008 happened.  I was sitting in an upscale bar/restaurant in Overland Park with 2 Alumnas (my stepdad and a family friend whom I babysat for), their respective spouses, my brothers, my sister and the kids of the other family.  Alex and I, being by far the most ridiculous ones in the family, wore all red and blue, including face paint and bandannas.  We looked absurd, and it was amazing.  The game was exciting - but the moment Mario laid that 3-pointer in....I honestly had never felt pride swell in my body like that.  I didn't know you could feel that high, that buzzed, that elated from something you weren't physically doing.  I didn't put that shot in the basket, but I felt like I had.  That sealed it.  From then on, I knew why people were fans.  I felt the connection to tens of thousands of Jayhawk fans across the world.  I felt a part of a whole.

This year, I got to really feel the road to the Championship.  Having people around me to cheer, get excited with and bond with - those are memories I will never forget.  Those are people I will never forget.  I never thought I could scream walking down the street, be part of a mob, or be in an environment where people are climbing stoplights.  That's a world this once quiet little girl never thought she'd live.  Now, I can't imagine my life not being this connected with people.  I now crave connecting.  That's why I ask people's names - I talk to waiters by their first names, I ask the stranger I'm standing by at the corner their name and how their day is going.  I make connections.  The more I do, the more aware of the world I become and I don't know how to express in words that feeling.  Usually I express myself best in text, but feeling like I didn't ignore the person I just passed on the street...it's a wonderful feeling.  I'm so much happier and I find my life gets put into prospective a lot because of it.  I commented on the necklace a worker at McDonalds was wearing and she told me she had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer last week.  That's why I comment, I ask, I talk to people - because you connect with someone...you don't blindly go through life.

Fandom has given me that.  It's made me comfortable to walk down The Strip in Vegas with a KU shirt on and high-five every Jayhawk fan I saw last year during the Elite Eight.  It helped make me bolder and helped me realize - we're all in this together.  So Rock Chalk and let's bring it in together on monday, boys!!